


dream the bodies warm again

by deathsweetqueen



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers Family, Awesome Wanda Maximoff, BAMF Tony Stark, Bottom Tony Stark, Breaking Up & Making Up, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Domestic Avengers, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Tony Stark, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Steve Rogers Lies, Steve and Natasha are idiots, Temporary Break Up, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, Tony finds about his parents, Top Bucky Barnes, Trust Issues, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 12:06:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17528414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathsweetqueen/pseuds/deathsweetqueen
Summary: Bruce grits his teeth. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he snaps. “None of us have ever seen this before, Tony. This bug never even existed until Bucky caught it. We’re charting new territory here. So, tell me, you have any bright ideas?”Tony deflates, promptly. “No, no, I fucking don’t.” He shakes his head, bitterly. “It shouldn’t happen like this. He shouldn’t have to linger on any of it, any of that torment and suffering and misery and fucking horror those evil bastards put him through. It’s not fucking fair.” He jumps off the bed. “I’m, uh, I’m going to re-wet these rags. They’re getting a little dry,” he mutters, in an attempt to vacate the current situation as soon as possible, just for a little bit, so he can get his head on straight.“Mission Report: December 16th, 1991.”Tony reels to a stop, just in front of the bathroom door. When he turns around, a shuddering sort of stillness hangs in the air, like everyone’s terrified that a pin is going to drop and destroy everything.Well, everyone except for Bucky, who groans like he’s dying and stares at Tony with filmy eyes.“Howard Stark,” he pants. “Maria Stark.”





	1. (i)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flight_Of_Icarus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flight_Of_Icarus/gifts).



> So, this all began from a prompt by Ica, who basically asked for an au where Bucky gets a fever and basically spills the beans about Howard and Maria during a hallucination. It's her birthday today, so I decided to give this as a little gift to her. Happy birthday, darling. I really, really hope you enjoy what I did with your prompt. 
> 
> And for those who were interested in the full original prompt: but imagine bucky catching a superbug, that his serum can't fight. and the main symptom is fever. so bucky is hallucinating, and he's burning hot. so tony has to make the medical decision to cool him down, bucky’s too far in his own mind to think about anything. but he reacts violently when they start cooling him because he's too out of it, but his body thinks cyro. it's...not a fun time. you know what would make it worse is if this was post tws and tony and bucky are in a relationship but neither of them know about howard and maria because bucky repressed the fuck out of his memories about his time as the winter soldier but starts talking about people he's killed because he's hallucinating them and mumbles howard and maria's name and tony finds out.
> 
> I want to stress the fact that Bucky does not remember Howard and Maria and he didn't know what happened until he's told, and both Bucky and Tony are consenting to anything and everything that happens between them in this fic. And this is not so much as a happy ending, but a hopeful ending between Bucky and Tony to build something all over again. Honestly, it's not even really a break-up. Just like a temporary thing where Tony can't deal just yet, if that makes sense.
> 
> The title from this poem comes from inkmagician's poem here on Tumblr: http://inkmagician.tumblr.com/post/160102748306/dream-the-bodies-warm-again-no-one-could

“Tony,” Bucky moans, reaching out for him with a limp hand that twitches feebly.

Tony hushes, bending over his body, with a washcloth at the ready. “It’s okay. I’m here, Bucky Bear.”

Bucky makes a snuffling, wheezy sound and curls against Tony’s thighs. Tony clucks his tongue and presses the washcloth against his sweat-matted forehead. Promptly, Bucky jolts with a shout, his eyes hazy and red-rimmed, but metal hand gouging a hole in the headboard. He snarls something in Russian, his mouth thinning into a bloodless line, before Tony runs the washcloth down the side of his hairline in a steady rhythm.

He slumps back onto the bed with a high, grating whine that makes Tony’s teeth hurt and his heart ache.

He hates being helpless.

“I don’t miss bein’ sick at all,” Bucky declares, definitively, writhing against the pillow until he gets himself into a position that is somewhat comfortable. “What the fuck is this anyway?”

“We think you caught some sort of superbug when we were busting up that lab last week. Remember, they were doing all sorts of creepy things in test tubes.” Tony shudders at the memory, rolling through his mind in stunning technicolour. “Body fluids _everywhere_. So unhygienic.”

“Such a baby,” Bucky mutters, fisting his flesh hand in Tony’s sweatpants.

Tony snorts. “Yeah, okay, we can decide whom the baby is after you’ve drunk your chicken noodle soup like a good little boy.”

Bucky eyes the flask that Tony pulls from the bedside table, dubiously. “Did _you_ make it?”

“The sass I get in my own house, in my own room, while I’m taking care of you like a damn good boyfriend, it’s amazing,” Tony huffs.

“Like I said, such a baby.”

Tony scowls. “Just… drink your soup.”

“Sir, Captain Rogers is asking for permission to enter,” JARVIS intones.

Tony blinks. “Yeah, sure, let him in.”

The door slides open with a slick little sound that Tony loves and Steve peeks his head through, just an inch.

“How’s he feeling?” he asks, concerned.

Tony looks down at the sad work of art that Bucky presents, his hand lingering over the bun he had tied Bucky’s hair into the moment it seemed like Bucky would just pull the long strands out by the root out of pure frustration. He settles it on the soft, slightly-damp hair, his thumb rubbing circles into his hot temples.

“Like shit,” he says, grimacing.

“Like I got the shit kicked out of me in an alley defendin’ your dumb arse,” Bucky grumbles into Tony’s hip.

Steve snorts. “Never asked you to defend me, you know.”

Bucky looks up at Tony and sniffles once. “You should’a seen him, doll. Like a fuckin’ beanpole and pickin’ fights over stupid shit. Got his arse handed to him every couple’a days. Would’a been in hospital way more times if I hadn’t been there.”

Tony smiles, unbearably soft, and leans down, kissing him gently on the hairline, unintentionally tasting the salt of his sweat.

“You’re a good friend, Bucky Bear,” he says, sweetly.

Bucky nods. “The best,” he agrees.

“He’s a jerk, that’s what he is,” Steve huffs. “Did he drink the soup or what?” he asks Tony.

“Wait, did _he_ make it?” Bucky asks, suddenly, his eyes as big and round as the moon at its peak. “‘Cause then I gotta go throw up.”

“Fucking jerk,” Steve mutters, glowering at his best friend, much to Tony’s eternal amusement (he just hopes JARVIS is capturing all of this in vivid technicolour).

“Don’t give me that look, Rogers. You fuckin’ burned water; don’t think I forgot!” Bucky warns.

“It was _one_ time,” Steve exclaims, flustered by Tony’s raised eyebrow.

“One time too many,” Tony chimes in, solemnly.

“Oh, shut up, Tony.” Steve scowls, petulantly, folding his arms across his broad chest. “Come all the way up here to check in on my best friend and all I get is abuse. Way to show your gratitude.”

“Poor baby,” Tony mocks.

Steve glowers at him, until Tony sighs, relenting. “Yes, he drank the soup, Mama Bear. You can relax now.”

“Yeah, go away, Stevie; you’re harshin’ the time I got with my fella.”

“See if I worry about you getting sick again, dumbass,” Steve mutters as he storms out of Tony’s bedroom.

“Drama queen.” Bucky rolls his eyes.

“You’re made for each other,” Tony says, dryly.

Bucky looks at him, mock-hurt. “You comparin’ us now? That’s not cool, baby.”

Tony stares down at him, sternly. “Finish your damp soup.”

* * *

Tony’s jolted awake when Bucky’s muttering grows louder and louder until it reaches a decibel that he can no longer ignore. When he looks to the side, Bucky is curled into a little ball on his side of the bed, cringing away from an invisible enemy, as if he were about to be hit.

“I will obey. I will obey. _I will obey_ ,” he mutters in Russian over and over again.

“Bucky,” Tony says, carefully, but doesn’t touch him.

He’s learnt the hard way what happens if he touches Bucky in the middle of a nightmare.

“Bucky, you’re having a nightmare, honey. You need to wake up,” he soothes.

Bucky’s eyes flutter open, revealing glazed pupils. The sweat beads well on his skin, and he’s shaking from head to foot, his hands clenching and unclenching on the bedsheets below them, which quickly dampens.

Tony’s hand hovers in the air, ready to smooth over Bucky’s brow, but before he can do anything, Bucky hurtles over the edge of the bed and promptly vomits onto the floor, filling the air with a sour tang that makes Tony’s stomach curdle.

“Shit,” he hisses, reaching for a towel.

Bucky cringes at Tony’s touch, as if the soft thread hurts him or perhaps a more haunting idea, in that he’s afraid of Tony, which is something that he’s unwilling to linger on. His flesh hand lashes out and clips Tony’s forearm with enough strength that there’ll be a bruise blossoming there come morning. His metal hand curls around the headboard post and snaps the wood in two.

Tony curses.

Bucky turns stiff as a board, unnatural and painful, before jerking and contorting uncontrollably. He makes garbled noises, his words nothing more than wet, gurgling sounds as if he were choking on blood. His jaw locks and the tendon in his neck becomes ugly and visceral against his skin.

“Shit, shit, _shit_. JARVIS, he’s having a seizure!” Tony shouts, fear welling up inside him like a floodgate is breaking. “Call Bruce, call Steve, right the fuck now!”

JARVIS is still and silent for a moment, as Tony watches the love of his life flayed raw right in front of him.

“Captain Rogers and Dr Banner are on their way, sir,” JARVIS tells him, promptly, fear and confusion colouring his voice.

“First aid for seizure, J. Hit me,” Tony says, grim uncertainty crawling up his spine.

“Clear the area of anything that he may be injured on.”

Tony kicks away the bedside tables, sending them lurching into the corner.

“Place something soft under their head and loosen any tight clothing.”

Tony shoves his own pillow under Bucky’s head, barely resisting the urge to touch and smooth back his hair.

“Gently roll the person on their side as soon as it is possible to do so and firmly push the angle of the jaw forward to assist with breathing.”

“Oh, God, J,” he moans. “I can’t move him so easily.”

The rush of self-loathing comes like acid.

“Captain Rogers is on his way, sir,” JARVIS soothes. “He will be able to do so.”

Steve bursts into the room on command, in boxer shorts, his hair wild.

“What’s going on?” he demands.

“He’s having a seizure, Steve,” Tony says, voice thick with desperation. “I need to turn him onto his side.”

Steve stands at attention in a moment, his face going grim and hard. He lunges towards the bed and bodily pushes Bucky onto his side.

“His jaw’s locked. We need to push the angle of his jaw forward so he can breathe.”

Steve nods, his movements careful yet determined.

Bruce enters, just as they’ve loosened his jaw, and he tenses, seeing the scene in front of him. He strides towards the bed purposefully, first checking Bucky’s pulse, opening up his eyelids to see the whites of his eyes.

“He’s coming out of it,” he tells Tony and Steve, lowly.

The relief comes like a car pileup, making everything inside him deflate.

“But I don’t like how hot he is. JARVIS, what’s his temperature?”

“107 degrees, Dr Banner.”

“Shit,” Tony hisses.

“We run a little hot though, with the serum,” Steve says, quickly.

“But not _that_ hot,” Tony snaps. “We need to cool him down.”

“Get rags, wet them with cold water,” Bruce orders.

For the first time, without a single argument, Steve and Tony work like a well-oiled machine to get a good pile of the rags ready for use. One by one, they lay them down on Bucky’s forehead, patting down until the sweat sluices off, even if Bucky shivers at the cold touch and cringes away.

“Dominica Lazarev,” he slurs.

Tony looks up, confused.

“Esme Bateman, Kenneth Ahmad, Marian Beck, Carlton Meyer, Grayson Cresswell, Hassan Santiago.”

“What’s he saying?”

Tony looks up to see Steve’s stricken face.

“I think…” Steve swallows hard. “I think it’s a list of the people he killed as the Winter Soldier. I think he’s dropping into the state he was with HYDRA, when he’d have to give them mission reports. I don’t think…” he shakes his head. “I don’t even think he remembers any of them. Maybe the fever’s opening up a bunch of floodgates.”  

Dread crashes in Tony’s stomach. He licks his suddenly dry mouth.

“Salma Orozco, Martina Cowan, Eric Shannon, Leopold Krylov, Adam Zaitsev, Sergio Schiavone, Karin Alvaro, Victoria Rozhkova.”

“Shit, shit. _Shit,_ ” Tony whispers. He looks at them, helplessly. “What do we do? How do we pull him out of it?”

Bruce shrugs, equally lost. “I don’t think we can, Tony. I think all we can do is wait it out. Hopefully, his temperature goes down, and the hallucinations go with it.”

“So, we just do _nothing_? Let him remember, _relive_ all that evil shit they made him do over and over again? Does that sound remotely sensible or fair to anyone here?” Tony asks, incredulously.

Bruce grits his teeth. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he snaps. “None of us have ever seen this before, Tony. This bug never even existed until Bucky caught it. We’re charting new territory here. So, tell me, you have any bright ideas?”

Tony deflates, promptly. “No, no, I fucking don’t.” He shakes his head, bitterly. “It shouldn’t happen like this. He shouldn’t have to linger on any of it, any of that torment and suffering and misery and fucking horror those evil bastards put him through. It’s not fucking fair.” He jumps off the bed. “I’m, uh, I’m going to re-wet these rags. They’re getting a little dry,” he mutters, in an attempt to vacate the current situation as soon as possible, just for a little bit, so he can get his head on straight.

“Mission Report: December 16th, 1991.”

Tony reels to a stop, just in front of the bathroom door. When he turns around, a shuddering sort of stillness hangs in the air, like everyone’s terrified that a pin is going to drop and destroy everything.

Well, everyone except for Bucky, who groans like he’s dying and stares at Tony with filmy eyes.

“Howard Stark,” he pants. “Maria Stark.”

_No._

_No, that’s not possible._

White noise roars in his ears.

Tony doesn’t even realise he’s shaking his head until his neck starts to hurt.

“Did he just say-?” Tony can’t finish the words; they’re too big, too heavy on his tongue.

Bruce slips off the bed, hand outstretched.

Tony backs away until his back hits the wall with a heavy smack. His eyes drift from Bruce’s pale face, his worried eyes, to Steve, who’s still sitting beside Bucky, lying there on the bed, head twisting from side to side, face drenched with sweat.

Steve flinches away from the look in Tony’s eyes (he can only imagine how he looks now), but his eyes are dark and full of guilt.

It sideswipes him, what Steve’s eyes are trying to tell him, hits him right in his bones, until he feels splayed open, wrecked, like he’s missing all of his skin and bones, until all he can see is that they’ve made an utter fucking fool of him.

“Did you know?” he rasps, past the rush of blood in his ears and the half-formed thoughts in his head and the swooping crash in his stomach.

Steve opens his mouth and abruptly closes it. He slips off the bed, approaches him like a skittish kitten.

“Tony, listen-”

Tony shakes his head. “Did you know?” he repeats, surprised by his own ability to keep his words steady.

“This isn’t what you think-”

He’s obfuscating on purpose.

“Don’t bullshit me, Rogers,” he bites out, in an ugly tone. “Did you _know_?”

Steve shakes from head to foot, before nodding, his head cast down. “Yeah, I knew.”

Tony’s hands clench and unclench around nothing. Something fists inside her ribs and undoes itself, and he chokes, the pain flaring hot.

Bile rises in his throat, sour and bitter.

“Did he…” he licks his dry mouth. “Did _he_ know?”

All of those memories destroyed with a couple of words – he can’t even say his name now.

God, he thinks he might die if Steve says out loud the words Tony’s been dreading – if this, if the happiest sliver of Tony’s life, has all been a lie.

“No, _no_. God, Tony-” Steve shakes his head, vehemently. “Of course not. Of course not. Tony, he doesn’t even remember… he doesn’t _know_ half the shit he did as the Winter Soldier. This fever… it’s just pulling things out of his brain, but I _swear_ , he doesn’t remember any of it. He doesn’t remember what happened, what he did, to your parents. If he did, he would never have-”

_Never have what, Steve? Never have come to my home? Never have approached me? Never have accepted the prosthetic I made him? Never have allowed me to get him pardoned for all the terrible shit he did as the Winter Soldier? Never have told me he loves me? Never have fucked me? Never have slept in my bed? Which is it, Steve?_

“Though, apparently, you would,” Tony says, bitterly, his lungs still constricting.

Steve grits his teeth. “That’s not fair.”

Tony wants to scream at him, all ugly and loud, like a dying animal in a trap. “Don’t you fucking _dare_ tell me what is and what isn’t fair, Rogers. Don’t you fucking dare,” he seethes.

He tastes salt on his tongue and realises with shame that there are tears, which he swats away, angrily.

Tears only make things worse for him. He wants to be angry.

Bruce takes a hesitant step forward. “Tony,” he begins, soothingly, as if a gentle voice and soft words is enough to fix the fact that he just found the same guy who’s been fucking him for the last eighteen months murdered his parents as a brainwashed assassin.

“Don’t come near me,” he says, fiercely.

He backs away, until he’s scampering into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him, like it’s the last safe space left for him, since the rest of his tower is overrun with people who smile at him and say they’re his friend and use him and use him and use him until they’ve taken all they want and don’t give a shit what they’re leaving behind in him.

There are furious knocks on the door, moments later, and he hates that; he hates that they won’t leave him alone, that they think he’s some child that needs to supervised.

“Tony, Tony, please open the door! We need to talk about this!”

“Tony, I don’t think you should be alone right now! Just open the door and we can sort all of this out!”

Tony leans over the sink and he can’t breathe. He fists his hands through his hair, wanting nothing more than to tear clumps out if it’d stop him feeling what he’s feeling right now. When he looks up, seeing his reflection in the mirror, he sees messy hair, like tumbleweed, and raw, salt-rimed eyes, a gaunt tinge to his face, like _his_ words were enough to empty out life from him.

Wouldn’t that be the funniest end to this terrible cosmic pun his life has become?

“Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!” he shouts, his voice scraping like a dragging chain, sharp, like flinders.

“Tony, please!”

Tony makes an angry sound, which sounds so vicious and biting that it surprises even him. “JARVIS, get them out of there! Make them leave, JARVIS!”

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS replies, promptly, a dark, savage edge to his tone.

JARVIS is the only friend he has left in this place; after all, who _wouldn’t_ take Steve’s side in all of this?

_He’s_ an innocent victim, right?

Tony’s the monster if he blames him. Tony’s the monster if he doesn’t immediately forgive him for inadvertently tearing away the first person to ever love him without wanting something back. Tony’s the monster if he lets this destroy what they have.

Tony’s so goddamn sick of being the monster.

* * *

Tony makes his nest in his workshop, once the coast is clear and he can sneak by without alerting anyone to his presence. Or maybe he’s just being naïve, and they all know exactly where’s going; either they don’t give a shit, or they’ve realised that he’s not in the fucking mood for group therapy. Either way, it suits him just fine, and the knot in his chest loosens when his workshop doors close with a slick little click.

He stumbles his way to his workstation, the monitors flickering on without even another word to JARVIS.

Blessedly, they all leave him alone.

They can’t ply him out of the workshop with promises of movie night and pizza and greasy fried chicken and over-caffeinated coffee. This isn’t something they can fix in him; nor do they have any sort of right to. This predates the Avengers, predates even Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan. Only Rhodey has any clue of what this particular tragedy means to him, and he calls and calls and calls, trying to make sure that Tony hasn’t slit his wrists in a depressive stupor (he wouldn’t; that’s not what his mother would’ve wanted; his mother would’ve wanted him to be strong, her little _patito_ ).

He’s both miserably grateful and viciously annoyed that they’ve left him alone there, to wallow in his grief and hurt and anger – it’s very hard to resolve everything inside him, the maelstrom that he’s become.

After a week, he becomes restless, curious. He had a dumbwaiter installed ages ago, ready for a solo inventing binge that _he_ would never have allowed, but it helps now, when it comes to food retrieval, without having to ever leave his workshop, outfitted with a nice comfy couch and fully-equipped bathroom that is his salvation.

But he needs to know.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, sir?” JARVIS says, promptly, never one to keep Tony waiting (the only man in his life, since the first Jarvis and Rhodey, to be worthy of the title).

“Show me, show me the footage,” Tony says, suddenly, clearing his throat of the knot.

“Which footage is that, sir?” JARVIS asks.

“From my room, after I went into the bathroom.”

“Are you certain, sir?” JARVIS’ voice is worried.

“Yeah,” he exhales, heavily. “Can’t keep my head in the sand forever, hey, J.”

“Very well, sir,” JARVIS says, in a low, rushed voice.

His monitor flickers with a high, grating sound before surveillance images scroll across the screen.

“Tony, Tony, please open the door! We need to talk about this!” Steve shouts, on the screen, pounding on the door with his big, deft hands.

Bruce is smacking the door as well, green around the neck. “Tony, I don’t think you should be alone right now! Just open the door and we can sort all of this out!” he says, urgently.

Tony wonders why they all think he’s such an utter catastrophe of a human being that they think he can’t be alone in the fucking bathroom after being told that the man he’s been screwing for eighteen months killed his parents as a brainwashed assassin and no one fucking thought to open their big mouths until said brainwashed assassin blurted it out in the middle of a fever-induced hallucination.

Honestly, it seems a little unfair to him.

“Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!” he hears himself shout from the inside of his bathroom.

God, he sounds like he’s about to have a mental breakdown – although, thinking back to that moment, when he thought his world was flaring up in fire, he could’ve, very easily.

Now, he has a little more perspective.

He’s still miserably angry, hurt, betrayed; right now, he doesn’t know if he’d spit on Steve Rogers if he were on fire (he probably would, because his good heart would win out before anything else).

But he won’t let this be the end of him.

He won’t let this destroy him.

Countless have tried and failed; why should some delusional, self-righteous steroid-infested soldier, and miserable fucking cunt who thought the world would be better or easier for them if his mother and father died bloody and violently get the better of him?

Just because the world thinks he’s weak, foolish, selfish, doesn’t mean he is.

It’s just another recycled tragedy he has to pull out of its box, deal with it and put it back where it belongs again, but he’s more than a sum of all the blows that life has dealt him.

He refuses to let this be the end of him; he refuses to let them _win_.

“Tony, please!”

It’s Steve who shouted. He had thought it was Bruce.

Even now, he’s still getting these people wrong – fucking fool that he is.

There’s a vicious, raw sound that comes from Tony’s throat, in the surveillance footage, from inside the bathroom – it surprises even him.

“JARVIS, get them out of there! Make them leave, JARVIS!”

“Yes, sir.”

Steve and Bruce keep pounding on the door, shouting at him, wanting to make him listen to whatever shitty platitudes they could come up with – _terrified of losing their fucking sugar daddy_ , he thinks, bitterly, _after all, what are they gonna do if I put them out onto the fucking street?_

JARVIS edges in then.

“Captain Rogers, Dr Banner, if you do not cease in your attempts to force entry into Sir’s bathroom, or demand his exit, I will take action against you. It will not be pleasant,” he says, coldly. “Please, leave. You have done quite enough.”

Steve looks up at the ceiling, a habit he hadn’t managed to train himself out of even after all these years.

“Please, JARVIS, I just need to talk to him. I just need to explain what happened, why I did what I did.”

But JARVIS gives him no quarter.

“Captain Rogers, it would be better if you and Dr Banner took Sergeant Barnes on your way out. Will his fever now abate, Dr Banner?”

Bruce blinks, as if he hadn’t thought he’d be addressed. He runs his hands through his hair, his neck flushed what looks to be a permanent green, at least for the time being.

“Yeah, uh, we should be able to get his temperature down from here.”

“Very well. It would be best if you took him with you. I cannot guarantee Sir’s wellbeing if you leave him here.”

“Huh, brutal, JARVIS,” present!Tony comments, the words coming out dull.

“I was having a ‘moment’, sir. I apologise.”

“Yeah,” he exhales. “I know what you mean. Is that it?”

“Yes, sir. Captain Rogers and Dr Banner left very quickly afterwards.”

“Is there anything else?” Tony bites his lips, mulls over the words that linger in his mind. “What did _he_ do, when he woke up out of it?”

JARVIS hesitates. “Sir, are you absolutely sure you want to see?”

“Yeah… yes.” Tony clears his throat. “I need to know.”

When the monitor flickers to life, _he_ is pacing around the room that Tony recognises he had been using before _he_ had permanently moved into Tony’s.

“What the fuck did you do, Rogers? What the fuck did you _do_?” Bucky barks, fisting his in his long hair, unbound, like he’d tear the strands off his scalp if he could. “What-what the _fuck_ , Steve? What the fuck is wrong with you? Why the fuck would you bring me _here_ , of all places, knowing what I did?”

Steve takes a hesitant step forward, his entire face miserable and drawn.

_Good_ , Tony thinks, viciously.

Steve _should_ feel half of what he’s feeling right now.

“Bucky, I can explain everything,” Steve practically begs. “I swear it isn’t like what you think.”

Bucky scoffs, a harsh, fragile little sound that tears through the air, like he’s moments away from crying. “I fuckin’ doubt that. I really fuckin’ doubt that.” He sinks down onto the bed, elbows propped on his thighs. “Fuck, Stevie, what did you _do_?” he whispers, his voice thick.

“I was trying to protect you,” Steve urges.

Bucky looks at him, incredulously. “How the fuck were you tryin’ t’protect me, huh? How is this protectin’ me? And Tony, who the hell was protectin’ him?”

“I was-I was trying to protect him too. I was protecting both of you,” Steve insists.

“Bullshit,” Bucky snorts, immediately. “I don’t know who you were protectin’, but it sure wasn’t either of us.”

“I just thought…” Steve closes his eyes. “I just thought it’d been so long ago; Tony had moved past it, and I didn’t want to bring up all of it. I know how it fucked with him, his parents dying, and I didn’t want to make it worse, dredging up all of the drama. And you, Bucky, you didn’t even remember, so I thought what good it would be to add another burden you had to carry around? It wasn’t fair to either of you.”

“It isn’t fair to either of us now,” Bucky says, darkly.

“I was trying to protect you both. I’m sorry if you don’t agree with my decision-”

“ _Agree with your decision_?” Bucky asks, incredulously. “Do you even hear yourself right now? Are you that fucking selfish, that much of a fucking monster? You brought me, the mental-case assassin that killed his parents, to Tony’s house. Do you even realise what that means, how fucked up that is?” he demands.

“It’s not your fault!” Steve exclaims. “You didn’t even know what was going on; you didn’t even remember! What good would it have done to talk about it all over again, rehash everything, make both of you relive everything you went through?”

“That doesn’t fuckin’ matter; I still fuckin’ did it,” Bucky snarls, jumping to his feet and stalking over to Steve like a loping panther. “You don’t get to make that choice for us, you get that, Rogers. It’s not your fuckin’ choice to make. Tony and I deserved to make that choice, and you took it from us ‘cause you thought you knew best. Well, you fuckin’ don’t. You fuckin’ don’t, and you are not the centre of the fuckin’ universe, not even close. This isn’t even fuckin’ about you, this isn’t your fuckin’ tragedy, and you still managed to insert yourself into somethin’ that had nothin’ to do with ya and fuck everythin’ up.”

Steve deflates, curling on himself, as if to protect himself from the vitriol, and runs a hand over his face.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know I fucked up. I just… I didn’t know what to do. I needed to bring you some place. And Tony offered, and I swear, I didn’t think the two of you would get together, and I was terrified of ruining it for you two, because I love you both. You both deserve to be happy, and I thought… what harm could it do?” he says, weakly. “If you two were happy, why should I ruin it?”

“But you did. You did ruin everythin’, Stevie,” Bucky moans. “Why didn’t you just tell us?”

In stunning technicolour, Tony can see as Bucky (there’s no point in still calling him _he_ , not after what he just heard) starts to cry.

It hurts like sharp teeth biting through his skin, and he wraps his arms around himself, like it could stop his heart from falling out of his chest with a wet squelch and crawling out towards Bucky, like that’s where it belongs.

Bucky laughs, hollow and wet. “God, he’s never gonna talk to me again, is he?” he muses, dully. “I mean, I always thought I’d lose him. Look at him, fuckin’ gorgeous genius billionaire and me, the guy from shitty old Brooklyn who worked at the fuckin’ docks to make ends meet. Oh, and not forgettin’ the hundreds of people I offed as a brainwashed toy assassin for a bunch of Nazis and Commies. But never ‘cause of somethin’ like this.”

Tony feels the words hit him like a blow to the gut, knocking the wind right of out of him, and immediately feels like shit, because Bucky Barnes murdered ( _was forced into murdering_ , his mind spitefully corrects) his mother and why the fuck should he be guilty over anything here?

He’s the fucking victim.

Bucky looks down at his upturned palms and his face contorts into an expression of such self-loathing that Tony wishes he could reach into the screen and smooth those lines out, make him happy again.

_Fucking pathetic bastard you are, Stark._

“How d’you get over this, Steve?” he asks, roughly. “How d’you forgive the guy who killed your parents?”

“It wasn’t you,” Steve says, weakly.

Bucky smiles, mournfully. “But I still did it,” he says, firmly. “And now, Tony will always know I did it. Who knows how many years he could’ve had with his parents? And I ended that. Whether or not I did it of my own free will is beside the point. Howard and Maria are dead; it was my hands that killed them, and Tony knows it was me. That’s all that fuckin’ matters.”

Steve runs a hand over his face, his cheeks splotchy, his eyes red and wet. “I’m so fucking sorry, Buck,” he whispers. “I’m so fucking sorry for ruining this for you, and for Tony. I’m so sorry.”

_You should be._

Bucky makes a rough sound. “No point in blamin’ you, not really. If I hadn’t killed Tony’s parents, none of this would be happenin’, right?”

“None of that’s your fault!” Steve insists, the anger returning swiftly, “What you did, all those years, it wasn’t you, okay. It wasn’t you.”

_Must be easy being you, Steve, so sure of yourself all the fucking time_ , Tony thinks, bitterly.

“You’re right, it wasn’t me,” Bucky agrees, his voice thin. “But I still did it. And now the man I love most in the world may never talk to me again. How’m I gonna live with that, Stevie, huh?” He looks at him, desperately, like his body is as heavy as a graveyard. “How do I fix this, Steve? Tell me what to do.”

“Off,” Tony rasps. “JARVIS, turn it off.”

The screen turns black with a low, grating whine, and Tony leans back.

The grief is still there in his body, hungry like a disease.

“If you are amenable to viewing this footage, sir, I believe it may be time to inform you that both Colonel Rhodes, Miss Potts, Dr Banner, Thor and Agent Barton have left you countless messages,” JARVIS prompts, cautiously. “They have all expressed their vehement disapproval and anger on your behalf as to Captain Rogers’ actions.”

Something warm unfurls in the pit of his stomach.

He digs his fingernails in his thighs.

Maybe only Steve had known about it, after all. Maybe they really were his friends.

“Sir, Agent Romanoff is approaching the workshop. Shall I allow her entrance?”

Except for Natasha. Natasha had known. Natasha knew everything about all of them.

She knew the exact night when Tony and Bucky had sex for the first time, and grilled Bucky extensively about the encounter afterwards, curiouser than even she liked about the veracity of Tony’s sex god reputation.

She had been pleasantly surprised.

All he felt for her now is an acid rush of betrayal and hurt and anger.

“Let her in,” he says, coldly.

There would be no escaping this conversation, and it was better to do it on his own turf, than let her have any sort of leverage over him.

To think he thought she was his friend – it’s kind of laughable, now that he thinks about it.

Natasha slips inside the workshop, quiet as a cat, loping forwards.

“Romanoff.” He inclines his head.

Natasha’s face flickers with hurt at the cold address before smoothening out. She wrings her hands together. “We’re all worried about you, Tony,” she says, quietly.

Tony raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure,” he says, dryly.

Natasha takes a step forward, meeting his heavy gaze head-on. “Look, I heard what happened and I just-”

“Before we go into this shtick, I’d like to confirm something first,” Tony cuts in. “Did you know too?” he asks, carefully.

Natasha opens her mouth.

“Before you answer, you should know that the way you answer will determine how this interaction and any other future interactions between us go,” he says, smoothly.

Natasha’s mouth falls shut. There’s a hint of a pink tongue, as she licks her lips.

He wonders if she were about to lie to him, straight to his face – right now, he wouldn’t put anything past anyone.

“I did know, yes,” she answers instead, her voice low.

The pain flares up hot, so much that he thinks he’s dizzy with it, and he wonders how he still manages to be surprised by the shit that people do to him, the knives they slide into his ribs and spine.

He shakes his head. “I knew you knew,” he tells her, smiling a little. “I think I was just hoping that you would tell me something different. Stupid, I know, right?” he laughs, harsh and cold. “They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting a different result. I’m probably insane at this point, wouldn’t you say?”

Natasha takes another tentative step forward. “I can explain everything,” she urges.

“I’m sure you can,” he concedes. “I don’t think I want to hear it, though. I feel like if you said anything at this point, if you tried to explain yourself, if you gave me excuses, it’d just be you manipulating me to smooth all of this over, right?”

Natasha bites her lip. “I’m your friend, Tony,” she insists.

Tony’s brow furrows. “See, I think _you_ believe that, but at the same time, I don’t think you know what friendship is. I think you understand priorities and that’s exactly what you did here. I think you prioritised something else over me and my feelings and my grief and my mental health and my fucking right to know how my parents fucking died. I don’t know what this great important cause was that you decided was more important than me. I don’t know if it was protecting Steve’s feelings, ensuring Bucky’s recovering, protecting yours and the rest of the team’s livelihoods, considering you live in my house rent-free and eat my food and sleep in my beds and use my money and get me to make you shit so you people can fight the good fight, right? Maybe it was a mix of all those things. _Was_ it a mix?”

Natasha swallows hard, like she’s legitimately and honestly lost for words. “Is that really what you think of me?” she blinks, like she’s blinking away tears.

He doesn’t buy it for a second.

“Tell me if I’m off course, here?” he prompts. “Am I? I don’t think I am.”

“I was protecting you. I know it doesn’t seem like that from where you’re standing, but it’s the truth. I just… I knew what your parents’ death did to you, and I didn’t want to make it worse for you. I didn’t want to rehash everything, not when you and Steve and Bucky were getting along so good. I didn’t want to ruin another good thing in your life, Tony. You’re my friend, my _family_ ; I was protecting you because I love you and you’re my _family_.”

Natasha looks at him, her eyes wide and blue and begging.

He remembers how good a fraud she is, how _invented_ she is, and every fraction of an inch of good will that he might have had for her ebbs away.

“You and Rogers really are made for each other,” Tony snorts. “You have the same shitty, delusional fake excuses.”

“That’s not fair, Tony.” Natasha’s voice rises. “We care about you. Maybe our execution wasn’t good, but everything we did, we did it because we care.”

“If this is how you care about someone, I don’t want to know how you hate, Romanoff,” Tony says, firmly. “You made the wrong call, you and Rogers, and now you have to live with the consequences.”

“You haven’t kicked us out yet,” Natasha says, quietly, like she had been expecting it of him.

He hates that it still hurts, her low opinion of him, and wonders why the fuck she (they) would live in his fucking house, eat at his fucking table, use his goddamn money and tech to fund their entire existences if they thought so little of him.

Tony shrugs and smiles, a little too sharp to something kind. “Maybe I’m just a better person than you,” he says, lightly.

Natasha bites her tongue before the retort slips out.

He knows that she doesn’t think he could ever be better than her in something, even with her ‘red ledger’; Natasha has always broken him down to bones and flesh and sins and found him wanting. Just because they were Avengers, just because they lived in the same building, just because he was practically her sugar daddy, doesn’t mean that her original opinion of him changed drastically.

She may have adjusted it a little bit, here and there, but people like Natasha always hold strong; they very rarely waver in judgment, and she was never going to truly change her mind about him ever.

“Is that what you want to be, Tony? Better than us?” she says, her voice soothing, like she’s trying to get him to admit that he’s not innocent here.

“I _am_ better than you,” he repeats, slowly. “I’ve done a lot of shit in my life, sure, but I’ve never leached off someone, while hiding the fact that said someone was fucking the man who killed his parents.”

“Bucky didn’t kill your parents, Tony, not really,” Natasha says, gently. “Remember? He was brainwashed by HYDRA; it’s not his fault, any of it.”

“I know that, but my parents are still dead. And if Bucky’s innocent, what’s my mother, Romanoff? Is she a victim? Is she innocent? Did she deserve what happened to her?”

“It was an unfortunate-”

Tony takes a step forward, his fists clenching. The anger rails hot and hard. “My mother was a living, breathing person, do you understand me?”

“Yes, Tony-”

“She was a good person. She was kind and fierce and beautiful. She was a hell of a lot more innocent than any of you, and she’s dead now. Do you have any fucking idea how that makes me feel?”

“It’s not that simple-”

“My mother is not a fucking plotline for you people. She isn’t something just _there_ to make Steve’s man-pain more valid, to make Bucky’s story more tragic, to make your stupid fucking decisions more reasonable. Do you understand me? My mother is not _yours_ to touch. Now, get out of my workshop.”

“Tony, don’t leave it like this.” Natasha practically pleads. “You need to fix this, with Steve, with Bucky, or you’ll regret it later on.”

“We all have our burdens to bear.” Tony shrugs. “Get out.”

“Steve thought he was doing the right thing. He’s not a _bad_ person. You know that, Tony!”

“You’re right.”

Natasha’s eyes gleam with hope.

“Steve is kind, so very kind. He’s just, apparently, not kind to me.” Tony folds his arms across his chest. “Now, for the third and _last_ time, unless you want me to sic JARVIS on you, get the fuck out of my workshop.”

* * *

“Did you find anything, J?” Tony asks, wearily, letting his chair spin in concentric circles around the workshop.

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS answers, haltingly. “It appears that there is a video.”

Tony goes taut and he sits up. “What video? A video of what?”

“From my perusal of its contents, it appears that there was surveillance footage from a traffic camera in the area of the incident that befell Mr and Mrs Stark, sir.”

Tony’s nails dig into the chair, white noise roaring in his ears. “Are you trying to tell me that there’s surveillance footage of my parents’ murders?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“And you found it?” Tony clarifies, carefully.

“Yes, sir.” JARVIS pauses. “Would you like to view it?”

Tony looks down at his upturned palms, splayed on his thigh.

He looks up.

“I want to see it.”

“Are you certain, sir?” JARVIS asks, haltingly. “I predict an increased state of anxiety and depression and stress upon viewing. It will not be conducive to your health.”

“I want to see it,” he says, dully. “I want… no, I think I need to see it. I’ve imagined the crash so many times. I want to know what really happened to them.”

“Very well, sir.”

His monitor flickers into existence.

There’s a road he knows all too well – he sat on the edge of that road and drank himself to unconsciousness, more than once, in the months that succeeded his parents’ death.

Their car careens from out of the frame and crashes right into the tree, the metal warping and the glass shattering like pinpricks.

Tony’s flinch is nothing small.

But he watches. He watches as a motorbike rolls into view, comes to a stop just in front of the wreckage, and a figure steps off it.

He knows it’s Bucky. He’d recognise that gait anywhere.

Bucky (no, he can’t call him Bucky; he’s the Winter Soldier here) stalks forward to the car.

His eyes look dead. His hair hangs over his face, limply, like it hasn’t been washed in weeks, in months. There’s no emotion, no sentiment, no understanding in his eyes – he’s numb to it all.

If Tony could, he’d find every single HYDRA cunt that did that to him and feed them their lungs – at the same time, his stomach churns with disgust: this man killed his mother. 

The Winter Soldier wrenches the car door open on the screen. His father falls out, unceremoniously, landing on the ground in a heavy thump. He crawls forward (he’s only ever seen his father proud – crawling somehow seems _wrong_ on him). There’s blood dripping from the wound on his hair, staining his grey hair a garish brown-red.

“Help my wife,” he moans. “Please. Help.”

The Winter Soldier fists his hand in his father’s hair, hefting him up off the ground, staring at the way the blood congeals on Howard’s face.

Howard blinks, his gaze unfocused. “Sergeant Barnes?” he mumbles.

_Oh,_

Tony hadn’t realised Howard had known.

“Howard!” Maria sobs from the passenger seat, trapped by her seatbelt.

Tony jerks in his seat, fingernails claw deep into the meat of his thighs, when the Winter Soldier starts pounding his metal fist into his father’s face. He sees red, red, red, until his father’s skull caves inward and he collapses to the ground, the light ebbing from his eyes.

“Howard!” his mother cries out again, her voice rasping like a dragging chain.

The Winter Soldier hauls his father’s corpse and places him in the driver’s seat, so his mother can see with aching visibility what’s been done to the love of her life. The Soldier rounds the car, and Tony knows what’s about to happen, knows it in his bones.

It’s like one of those horror movie gore scenes – you know it’s happening, you know the serial killer’s about to pull out the intestines of the young busty heroine, you know you don’t want to look, but you can’t take your eyes off it – it’s horrible, yet affirming, at the same time.

So, he watches, he watches as the Winter Soldier wraps a hand around his mother’s throat. She’s silent like a baby bird, even though it hurts (Tony _knows_ it hurts), even though her lungs are burning and squeeze a little too tight, even though her throat spasms and there’s a wet ripping sound when blood cells burst.

She dies like that, silent, and her neck goes loose and rolled when he finally releases her from his grip. It feels like it was easy, it was so easy for her to die there, it was so easy for her life to end, without ceremony, without drama.

She’s dead in this video, and it’s a fact.

The Soldier leaves them there, in the car, doesn’t spare them a second glance, knowing that he’s done his job. He strides over to the other side of the car, in full view of the surveillance camera, and pulls out his gun. His face is as blank as Tony’s dead mother’s and that terrifies him just as much, sickens him just as much. He stares down the camera and shoots.

The screen goes black.

Tony wrenches himself away from the monitors and out of the chair, and fists his hands in his hair. There are no tears; he’s too tired and wrecked for tears; he can’t linger on anything but the acid rush of sheer loathing and helplessness.

He can’t help but remember the last time he and Bucky had sex, the way Bucky spread his legs over his arms, how his big, deft hands had touched him so carefully, like he was precious, how he’d made him come like a seventy-car pileup until he was just a mass of flesh garbling out unintelligible noises. He imagines those very hands that he had kissed, traced scars on, and imagines them choking his mother until her eyes fill with blood and she gasps her final breath and dies in that fucking car.

He doubles over and vomits right onto his workshop floor.

The air around him is rancid and he feels dizzy with it all. He wipes his mouth in disgust. The bots roll towards him, intent on helping, but he shakes his head, wearily, and shoos them away.

This is his mess to clean up.

He finds a washcloth, dampens in and gets on his knees, mopping up the mess, hyperfocusing on the rhythm of his hand and the cloth moving back and forth.

That’s how Rhodey finds him, cleaning sick off his floor.

“Sir, Colonel Rhodes is approaching the workshop. Shall I allow him entrance?”

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose and leans back on his heels. “Yeah, why the fuck not.”

The door gives away with a slick little click and Rhodey slips inside. Tony turns around, and the two of them just stare at each other, until Rhodey’s nose scrunches up.

If he were in a better mood, Tony would laugh.

He knows Rhodey makes that face when the reek of cheap alcohol and vomit finally hits him.

“You okay, man?” Rhodey asks, carefully.

Tony slides to his feet and makes his way to the sink to throw out the washcloth and disinfect his hands.

“I’m fucking great, Rhodey. Fucking great,” he mutters.

“No. No, you’re not,” Rhodey says, gently, and he can hear the pad of footsteps.

“I’m fine,” Tony insists.

“And that’s why this place smells like the morning after a kegger at a frat house?” Rhodey asks, sceptically.

Tony rounds on him with a fake smile plastered across his face. “I’m a drunk, man. I’ve always been a drunk. This is me just living up to the hype.”

“I don’t think so.”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah, I think you’re sad, and I get it.”

Tony snorts.

“I know what happened.”

Tony tenses – the last thing he needs is a lecture from Rhodey.

“Dr Banner rang me up, asked if I was free to come down, told me what was going on.”

“Yeah, I’m sure everyone’s having loads of fun airing my dirty laundry all over the tower,” he says, bitterly.

“It’s not like that at all, man,” Rhodey argues. “You’ve got friends here, people who care about you. Yeah, Rogers and Romanoff are arseholes, but not the rest of them. The rest of them love you.” He pauses. “But this isn’t about them. This is about you, and what happened.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“How’re you doing?”

“You know, as expected.” Tony’s smile is too toothy and too sharp at the edges. “The guy I was fucking apparently killed my parents in cold blood, but it wasn’t actually him because he was tortured and brainwashed by a bunch of Nazi terrorists. Oh, and I found the video.”

Rhodey’s brow furrows together. “The video?”

“Yeah, there’s a video of my parents being murdered,” Tony says, casually. “I watched it.”

It all feels like an out of body experience.

Rhodey’s face is alight with horror. “The fuck do you mean you watched it? _Alone_?”

Tony shrugs.

“Tony, you gotta know what a bad idea that was,” Rhodey groans, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I had no other choice,” Tony says, quietly.

“You could’ve called me, Pepper, Bruce, anyone. Just… not watched it alone.”

Tony shakes his head, his neck cracking with the effort. “No, no, you don’t get it. _You don’t get it_.”

“Get what, Tony? What don’t I get?” Rhodey lowers his voice, like he’s talking to a wounded animal.

“I had to watch it, on my own. She deserved that. She was owed that from me. _I had to, Rhodey. I had to_.”

Tony’s shaking head to foot, his voice choking.

“Who did, Tony? Who?” Rhodey asks, worriedly.

“My mum, Rhodey.” Tony finally lets his composure slip, finally lets all of those bridges fall, and sobs a hurt little noise that makes his lungs constrict. “My mum. I had to watch it. She deserved that at least from me.”

“Shit, Tony.” Rhodey approaches him, carefully, and places his hands on Tony’s shoulders. “Tony, oh, Tony.”

“My mum,” Tony insists, lingering on those two words.

“Your mum loved you, Tony. She wouldn’t want this,” Rhodey urges. “She wouldn’t want you doing this to yourself.”

Tony wrenches himself from Rhodey’s grip and stalks away. “That’s the shit people say because grief is fucking inconvenient to them,” he says, scathingly. “Don’t fucking insult me with that shit. Maybe it’s not healthy, maybe it’s not fucking proper, but I dare you to find a better coping mechanism for the problem I got, Rhodes. I dare you.”

Rhodey grits his teeth. “Okay, fine, but where do you go from here, Tony? Drink your entire stash, and then what? It doesn’t change what happened. It won’t make you feel better. And it sure as hell won’t bring your parents back.”

“I’m very much aware of that,” Tony says, bitterly. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, I get it.” His voice grows soft and weary. “You’re worried about me. I appreciate it; you have no fucking idea how much I do. But I’m asking you, as my best friend, to just let me get through this the way I want to. I’m not… I’m not gonna drink forever. I just… fuck, if I go up there, I have to see all of them. I have to see Rogers and Romanoff and… _Bucky_ , okay; I have to see Bucky, and I’m not ready for that.”

Rhodey reaches for him, pulls him in close. “You don’t have to be, you know. You can be angry. I just… I don’t want to see this become your whole life.” He shakes his head. “Look, if you want me to, I can go up, in War Machine, and beat the shit out of Barnes if it’ll make you feel better, but no offence, it’ll make _me_ feel like shit because he is a brainwashed POW. _But_ Rogers and Romanoff? Yeah, I can do that real easy,” Rhodey muses. “Delete, bitch.”

Tony laughs, all choppy and stunted, but it’s the closest thing he’s had to a real laugh since this clusterfuck began.

God, he loves Rhodey.

“I’m trying,” he says, his voice muffled by Rhodey’s shoulder. “I really am. I just… I don’t how to separate it yet.”

“Separate what?” Rhodey asks, settling his large palm on Tony’s hair.

“I watched Bucky kill my parents. I won’t be able to erase that image from my head ever again, but I know, logically, it wasn’t him, not really. I just can’t separate Bucky from the Winter Soldier. Not yet, at least. I can’t go upstairs until I have.” He looks up at Rhodey, with big eyes. “Please say you understand.”

Rhodey is the only who _can_ understand. Rhodey is the only one in his life that was actually there when his parents died, when Jarvis (the _first_ Jarvis) died, when he wanted to crawl inside the coffin with all three of them because it seemed easier than living a life without them.

“‘Course I understand,” Rhodey sighs. “I just… I worry about you, okay. I wanted to give you your space and I did, but I couldn’t just let you wallow on your own like this.” He shakes his head.

“You shouldn’t have to worry about me if I were an emotionally stable and healthy human being,” Tony snorts, guilt churning in his stomach. “I’m sorry. I should’ve… _fuck_ , I should’ve reached out or something. I just couldn’t deal with people yet.”

“That’s okay, you know,” Rhodey says, gently, cuffing him lightly. “You don’t have to have it on all the fucking time, Stark. Just, you know, in future, let us know you’re alive and what’s going on, so we don’t storm the place.”

“I heard all your messages,” Tony says, roughly, rubbing a hand over his face. “I should’ve responded. I’m sorry.”

“S’okay. Again, just don’t leave us in the lurch. Man, you have no idea how many people got your back, do you?” Rhodey shakes his head, fondly.

Tony shrugs and musters up a shaky smile for him. “Still getting used to it.”

“I can see that.” Rhodey pauses, squeezing Tony to him like a vice that lets Tony stop breathing and just _relax_ for a moment. “So, what the hell have you been doing down here this whole time?”

Tony ignores the way his hands shake when Rhodey releases him. “Uh, I’ve actually been tinkering with the armour a bit. Came up with some ideas I want to implement in yours and mine; wanna take a look?”

Rhodey nods, immediately understanding what this distraction means for Tony in this moment, and Tony feels the weight of his kindness like a blow to the gut – he will never stop being astounded at what an amazing human being James Rhodes is, even on his deathbed, he thinks.

“Yeah, ‘course. What’ve you got, man?” Rhodey says, without missing a beat, without even questioning Tony on his emotional baggage or his currently shitty mental state.

Something loosens in Tony’s chest and he drags Rhodey to his monitors.

Even if his world is flaring up in fire, he still has Rhodey.

He’ll always have Rhodey.


	2. (ii)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for explicit sex between Tony and Bucky.

Rhodey’s entrance into the workshop begins a long line of well-wishers who feel the need to infiltrate his happy space to explain to him exactly how wrong he is to think that everyone automatically agrees with Captain America.

Fucking Howard.

Pepper is first, and if Tony’s being honest, she’s the one he hadn’t been looking forward to at all.

JARVIS alerts her approach, long before she actually makes it to the door. Like Rhodey’s, her passcode no longer works, and he’s pretty sure that she’s glowering at him through the glass.

“Shall I let Miss Potts inside, sir?” JARVIS asks.

“She’s going to camp out there if I don’t, isn’t she?” Tony asks, wearily.

“History would suggest _yes_ ,” JARVIS chimes in.

“Joy,” Tony sighs. “Okay, fine. Let her in.”

Pepper’s heels clicking against the linoleum is the first sound he hears as soon as the door slides open.

“Tony-” she begins, her voice firm.

“If you’re here to berate me for not coming to a meeting or not signing some fucking contract, I am really not in the fucking mood,” Tony says, without taking his eyes off the monitors in front of him.

“Actually,” Pepper’s voice curdles with hurt. “I’m here to say that I threw one of my heels at Captain America’s stupid face, but I’m glad to know you have so much faith in me.”

Tony turns around. “Oh,” he says, lamely, rubbing his stomach where the regret pools. “Sorry.” He offers.

Pepper huffs. “You better be.” She strides up to him and throws her arms around his neck. “Captain America: what a fucking prick, huh?”

Tony leans into her touch, buries his face in her neck. She always smells like Annick Goutal, all sweet and herbal and citrusy, and it’s like crack to him right now – he thinks his mother used to wear that perfume, when he was a kid, and he didn’t like her abandoning him for some stupid company party that had no meaning.

He remembers the way she laughed, warm and bright in his ears, and he flinches with his whole body.

Pepper’s hand settles on his hair. “I’m so sorry, Tony,” she says, roughly. “I’m so sorry about your parents. I’m so sorry you had to find out that way. I’m so sorry Rogers kept this from you for so long. I’m so sorry about Bucky.”

“Have you seen him?”

He doesn’t know why he asks; he doesn’t even know why he wants to know, but he just blurts it out.

Pepper pulls back, her face crinkling with surprise. “Have I seen Bucky?”

Tony nods, a little aborted shake of his head, like he both wants to know and couldn’t care less.

Her brow furrows. “Yeah, I saw him when I came in.” Her face gentles. “He’s pretty messed up by what’s happening.”

Tony grimaces and looks away, hoping that she won’t see how much he hurts and hates at those words. “Yeah, I can imagine.”

If his entire world’s turning to shit in front of him, Bucky can’t be doing much better.

“But _you’re_ my friend, Tony, and I’m more worried about how you’re doing,” Pepper says, firmly. “I like Bucky, a lot, and I thought you two were amazing together, but I have always been and will always be on _your_ side.”

Tony abruptly feels like crying, but immediately remembers Howard’s _stop crying like a fucking pansy, Tony; boys don’t cry_ shtick and forces himself to swallow it all down.

He simply shrugs. “He’s not a bad guy. None of this is his fault.”

Pepper softens. “That’s admirable of you, Tony,” she says, gently. “I don’t know if I would’ve been able to be so kind if I were in your position.”

Tony chews on his lip. “What else am I supposed to do?” he asks, wearily. “I could blame him, take it out on him, and I know him, Pepper – he’d just take it because he blames himself. But it’s not gonna bring my mum back, and he’s been through enough. It isn’t his fault, after all, I just…”

_I need to be able to say it out loud, to myself, and know in my bones that it’s the truth, no buts, no excuses, no compromises, no doubts. I have to know it’s the truth._

_I can’t see him until I know it’s the truth. It wouldn’t be fair to him, to go up there and meet his eyes and know there’s a part of me, a fucked-up, angry, sad part of me, that can only remember the visceral image of him choking my mother to death, even if I logically know it’s not his fault, it could never be his fault, not after what those fascist cunts did to him._

He shakes his head. “Plus, I still love him,” he admits.

He’s always loved everything bad for him.

Pepper bites her lip. “That’s not a bad thing,” she offers. “Maybe you two can work things out; not now, of course, but after some time’s passed.”

Tony’s aching for that possibility, but he doubts he’ll ever get to make it reality.

He looks down at his feet and rocks back on his heels. “I don’t know, Pepper,” he says, wearily.

He could only imagine what Howard would say.

_“I can’t believe you went straight back to fucking the man who murdered me and your mother. I always knew you were a fucking disappointment, Anthony.”_

Or maybe, he’d be pleased as punch at being given the opportunity to be offed by Captain America’s best friend, brainwashed, tortured assassin or not – Howard was fucked up like that.

Pepper throws her arms around him. “It’ll all work out, I promise,” she reassures.

He wants to ask her _how do you know_? but keeps quiet, preferring just to linger here, swaying in the embrace.

Pepper sniffles against his shoulder. “By the way, there’s a shareholders’ meeting that you really need to be at on Thursday morning-”

Tony pulls away from her embrace sharply, with a groan. “Oh, my God, Pepper. Get out.”

Pepper’s warm, bright laugh in his ear is the most beautiful thing he’s heard in so long.

But he can’t help but miss Bucky’s.

* * *

Clint throws him a cooling beer when he enters the workshop, which Tony barely catches with his fingers before it falls to the ground.

Tony looks down at it. “What’s this for?” he asks, confused.

Clint raises an eyebrow. “For drinking,” he says, slowly.

Tony glares at him. “What are you doing down here, birdbrain?”

Clint shrugs. “Got sick of your whole Unabomber routine. Thought I’d come down and see what’s going on here.”

Tony musters a sickle-shaped smile. “Oh, you know, the usual: just trying to rationalise the fact that my parents were murdered by my boyfriend, while he was brainwashed and abused by a bunch of Nazis.”

Clint grimaces. “Yeah, that totally sucks, dude. You got a bottle opener somewhere?”

There are a million things he could say to Clint in this moment, but he deflates. “Yeah, check the second drawer on the left.” He gestures to his workstation.

Clint raises the quickly condensing beer at him in thanks and makes his way to Tony’s workstation, fishing out a bottle opener out of one of the drawers and opening up the beer bottle. He hands it to Tony, who bites back the instinctual flinch and shakes his head.

“I got a couple of tricks up my sleeve,” he reassures Clint.

Clint’s brow furrows.

Tony simply smacks the bottle down hard on the edge of the workstation and the cap pops off, the beer frothing over the top, which he quickly laps up before it drips onto the floor. It takes like sewage, but it’s cold and wet and settles easy in his stomach, so the bitterness on his tongue is easy to ignore.

“So, we’ve officially Mean Girl’ed Rogers,” Clint says, casually, leaning back against the workstation. “Hell, even Phil’s pissed, and we all know how much of a Cap fanboy he is.”

Tony snorts. _Ain’t that the truth._

“And Romanoff?” he says, pointedly.

All the lines in Clint’s face tighten. “Natasha should’ve known better,” he says, tersely, and that’s all he has to say on the matter.

That’s enough for Tony.

So, they stand there, in his workshop, and they drink their beers without saying another word to each other, and somehow, that says it all.

* * *

Bruce comes down and Thor comes down, and they both offer their support, their kind words, and completely denounce everything Rogers and Romanoff did – they know, they know that fathers can be shit, but good mothers are fucking sacred and you don’t touch them.

But Wanda is the one that surprises him. He almost dies of shock when JARVIS announces her imminent arrival, and he seriously considers denying her entry, before deflating and allowing her inside, wondering if this is the point where his self-imposed isolation has rendered him fucking stupid.

He doesn’t look at her when she slips inside, keeps his eyes on the monitors in front of him but hears the soft pad of her footsteps behind him.

He can practically hear the screeching she’s about to gift him with.

“What the fuck do you want from me, Maximoff?” he asks, wearily. “If you’re here to tell me how deserved you think this is, how legitimate of a terrible cosmic pun this is, how you think this is just karmic retribution for all the shit I’ve done, _save it._ I’m not in the fucking mood right now.”

“Tony.”

He turns, because he’s never heard her say his name so unbearably soft, so gentle before.

“If I may, I’d like to give you a hug,” she says, tentatively, tucking her hands behind her back, her foot scuffing against the floor.

Tony jolts in surprise. “Why?” he asks, suspiciously.

Wanda shrugs. “I feel like you need one.” She shuffles, awkwardly. “I know we are not friends, per se, but I… well, I feel, or I have felt, what you feel now, and if I can, I would like to make some of it better.”

Tony chews on lips and mulls over the possibility that she’s trying to get close enough to him so that she can put a butterknife in his throat – he wouldn’t put anything past her.

“No magic,” he warns. “The moment I see any of that red stuff, I’m kicking you out.”

Wanda nods. “Of course.”

She approaches him like he’s a wounded deer, with tentative but obvious steps, until she’s lingering right in front him. She wraps her thin arms around him, having to lean up on her toes to properly hug him.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers into his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Tony huffs. “Me too.”

“It’s not easy,” she begins, carefully. “To make nightmares of the people you live with.”

Tony snorts – he can only imagine who the star of her nightmares is. “You got that right,” he says, bitterly.

“Steve should’ve told you, as should have Natasha,” she says, solemnly.

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Wanda gives him a careful, weighty stare. “You loved your mother as much as I ever loved my parents. If I were willing to kill you, ruin you, avenging them, I would expect no less from you regarding Steve and Natasha. Even Bucky.”

Tony shakes his head. “It’s not Bucky’s fault.”

“Yes,” Wanda agrees. “And you didn’t kill my parents.”

“That’s different,” Tony argues. “I _should’ve_ know what was going on with your parents; Bucky wasn’t in control of his actions at all; he didn’t even know what he was doing.”

“Tony, if Bucky isn’t responsible for killing your parents, you are not responsible for killing mine,” she reminds him, gently. "You had no control over what your weapons were used for. Once they were sold, they were out of your hands. And when you learned they were being used for evil, even if it wasn’t your actions that allowed them to be used for evil, you stopped it all.”

Her voice is low, soothing, like she knows what it’s like to be the caged, hungry bird hearing that logic and having it not settle well within her.

Then again, he doubts there’s anyone better qualified to have this conversation with him.

She threads her fingers through his. “Reason is not so easy to stomach, not when you’ve seen your mother’s corpse,” she says, knowingly.

Tony looks down at his feet. “How did you do it? Stomach the logic?” he asks, almost desperately.

Wanda shrugs. “There is no one way. I didn’t know you, Tony. I only knew the monster I thought you were. My feelings changed when I came here, when I lived with you, when I saw the kind man you were truly. And you’ve seen that in Bucky. You know the man he is, what he feels for you. Perhaps that will make it easier.”

_My problem isn’t that I don’t know what sort of man Bucky is. My problem is that I can’t reconcile the two._

_I can’t forget I know that it happened. I can’t forget I know it was his hands, even if his mind wasn’t there._

But he doesn’t say all those things to Wanda. For her, he just nods and looks away.

* * *

It takes some time, but he finally stops having nightmares – the one recurring nightmare, where he’s sitting the backseat of the car his parents crashed, paralysed down to his feet, while Bucky cracks his father’s skull open on his metal fist, ignoring how Howard pleads for him to save his wife, to save his son, and his mother sobs from the inside the car, blood staining her beautiful hair, while Bucky rounds the car and wraps his flesh hand around Maria’s throat and squeezes and squeezes and squeezes until he wrings the last breath out of her and she sobs for Howard, for Tony, for God, for _someone_ to help her and finally, she slumps over in her seat, her eyes wide and blank and empty.

He’s so glad he can stop having that one.

He considers that progress, and decides to take a sabbatical from his self-imposed exile.

He emerges from the workshop and climbs up the stairs, each step weighing on him like stone, hand clenched around the railing. When he reaches the top, it’s thankfully empty, and he breathes a sigh of relief, running a hand over his hair, and starts making his way to the common room.

The first time he sees Bucky, he freezes so tight that he starts to worry that he might’ve had a stroke.

He turns on his feet and walks away because he’s a fucking coward and he can’t deal with this right now.

Bucky doesn’t follow.

He won’t follow.

* * *

The first time he decides to face Bucky on, the man is sitting in the kitchen, in the middle of the night, eating right out of a tub of salted caramel ice cream, on his own.

Good, this doesn’t need an audience.

There have been enough people to witness how he let his grief strip him down to bone and flesh and tissue, until he was screaming all ugly and loud like an animal in a trap, until he was nothing more than a blur of rage and self-pity and hurt and instinct, until he could only semi-function as a human being within the safety of the four walls of his workshop, with no one there to see how he crumbled at the realisation that he’d probably die alone in this stupid tower.

Fuck, he’s probably going to die alone in this stupid tower.

He takes a deep breath and grips the door frame for support, just needing something solid to fist his hand around.

“How many times have I told you how disgusting that is?” he says, bluntly, as he lingers in the doorway.

Bucky’s eyes snap up like a deer caught in headlights, his fingers curling around the rim of the dining table, like he doesn’t know if he should hurtle to his feet and run out of there, or he should stay and face what’s about to come.

“You know how much I hate scooping it into a bowl,” Bucky says, with a weak smile, hunched over like he’s bracing himself for a blow.

Tony hates that Bucky’s afraid of him, thinks he might actually hurt him, but knows he hasn’t exactly reacted well during this entire incident – he doesn’t blame him for being wary.

“You already put it in the microwave to melt it a little; how hard is it after that?” Tony complains, sliding into the seat opposite to him.

It’s an old argument for them.

He makes grabby hands for the ice cream, deftly ignoring how Bucky’s face flickers with surprise. Bucky slides it across the table towards him, the spoon rocking from side to side inside the rim with a sharp clatter. Tony takes a generous bite and hums in satisfaction.

“God,” he moans. “That is really fucking good ice cream. I gotta know where JARVIS gets him from.”

“You know where JARVIS gets him from,” Bucky says, lightly, curling his tongue around the words slow, like he doesn’t know what Tony’s breaking point is. “Remember that little grocer we visited in Astoria? JARVIS pretty much buys all their stock, all the time.”

“Huh.” Tony grimaces. “Why the fuck were we in Astoria?”

Bucky snorts. “Fuck if I know.”

Tony both loves and hates how easy it is for them to slip back into old habits.

“Well, don’t hog it,” Bucky says, bravely, the lines in his face turning firm.

Tony’s so proud of him.

 _Don’t take shit from me either, babe_ , he wants to say, but can’t quite force the words off his tongue.

He’s not ready for that yet.

He can only parse out good will and warm feelings and understanding in careful measures.

Tony scoffs. “I took _one_ bite; how is that hogging it?” he argues.

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t pass it back to me.”

Tony shakes his head. “So petty,” he sighs.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Just… give it here.”

“Fine.” Tony shoves it back to him. “See if I spot you any ice cream when it’s my turn to take it out of the freezer.”

“National tragedy right there,” Bucky says, dryly, digging his spoon into the tub once more.

* * *

The next time, he finds Bucky in the common room on his own, watching something on the giant-ass television mounted against the wall, his arms thrown over the back of the couch.

Tony simultaneously feels like curling up against him and fleeing.

Bucky goes taut like piano wire when he sees him, though, and shuffles awkwardly in his seat, like he doesn’t know what to do, how to react. 

“I can, uh, I can leave, if you want,” he offers, gently, rubbing the back of his neck.

Tony shakes his head before he even knows what he’s doing. “No, no, you were here first. Uh, what are you watching?” he asks, curiously.

“You know that new Netflix show: You?” Bucky tells him, mustering a half-hearted smile for him.

“Oh, right, the one with the hot stalker.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Penn Badgley is _not_ hot.”

“Uh, yeah, he is.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Oh, please,” Tony says, derisively. “The only reason you don’t like him is because he looks like a preppy, less hot version of you.”

“That is… that is…” Bucky splutters. “That is completely untrue.”

Tony rolls his eyes and flops down onto the couch beside him. “You are such a liar,” he sighs.

Bucky gives him a soft, sad look. “I’d never lie to ya, doll.” His face contorts, and he grits his teeth, his eyes snapping away from Tony’s. “Shit, shouldn’t’ve called ya that,” he says, gruffly. “Sorry about that. It won’t happen again.”

“Bucky,” Tony begins, quietly and achingly sad, his fingers twitching on the couch like he wants to reach for him but no longer knows whether he has the right.

Bucky shakes his head, jumps to his feet like he’s on a mission, his hands trembling by his side. “I should probably go. M’sure you wanna watch somethin’ in peace. I’ll, uh, I’ll just leave ya to it.”

“Bucky, wait.” Tony grips his wrist. “Don’t go,” he murmurs. “Don’t go like this. Let’s just talk.”

He’s not even ashamed to say that he’s begging.  

Bucky avoids Tony’s gaze, but doesn’t wrench his arm away, even though Tony knows he can lift cars and kick tables into the wall and the bare-fingered hold Tony has on him will never compare – Tony considers it a win, nonetheless.

“Tony, you don’t-” Bucky sighs, wearily, his eyes fluttering shut. “You don’t need to do this,” he says, tersely.

“Do what?” Tony asks, confused, his brow furrowing.

“Pretend like shit is _okay_ between us,” Bucky snaps, scowling down at him like a thunderstorm. “It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to me. It’s not fuckin’ fair, Tony.”

It doesn’t take much more than that for Tony to get angry as well, sliding to his feet so that he can match Bucky, glower for glower.

“I’m trying to make this better, make this easier for us! Is that really such a bad thing?” he argues, stung by his reaction.

“You really think you can make this better?” Bucky asks, incredulously, like he wants to wring Tony by the shoulders. “I killed your parents, Tony!”

Tony reels back like Bucky slapped him clean across the face. “I _know_ that,” he says, coldly.

“Are you sure about that? Cause the late-night ice-cream conversations and you casually wantin’ to watch a show about a romanticised, fucked-up relationship ain’t givin’ me so much confidence in that area,” Bucky tells him, snidely.

Tony’s lungs squeeze a little too tight. “That’s not fair,” he says, quietly.

Bucky shakes his head. “I killed your parents. You should be kickin’ my ass out onto the streets. Not playin’ nice with me like nothin’ happened.”

“ _Everything_ happened,” Tony says, fiercely. “You have no clue… you have no _idea_ what it’s taken for me to be here, standing in front of you, having this conversation with you. You have no idea what I’ve put myself through the last couple of weeks to be able to look at you and not want to throw up at the twisted as fuck ending of my so-called happy ending. Don’t you fucking dare cheapen that, Barnes.”

“Then, why the fuck are you here?” Bucky demands, stressing every single syllable.

“Why don’t you want me here?” Tony returns, just as sharply.

“Because I’m tryin’ to protect ya, you dumbass,” Bucky roars.

Tony’s half-proud of Bucky in this moment – twenty or so months ago, when Bucky first came to Stark Tower, Tony would never have dreamed that he was capable of shouting at him like this, so terrified he had been of collecting more scars and more bruises from people he knew nothing about.

But it’s anger and sick resentment that wins out here.

“I don’t need you to protect me,” Tony bites out, in an ugly tone. “In case you forget, people’s fondness for making unilateral decisions in the name of _protecting_ me is what got us into this mess in the first place.”

Now, it’s Bucky’s turn to flinch.

Tony feels like a real heel, because it’s not half as satisfying as Tony thought it would be, Bucky cringing from him like he’s scared – it just makes the bile rise in his throat, sour and bitter.

“I just…” Bucky’s fingers curl and uncurl by his side, like he doesn’t know what he wants to do with them, but he has to do _something_. “I just, I don’t want you to hurt anymore.” He meets Tony’s eyes with his own, something pained shadowing his eyes. “I can’t be the reason why you hurt, Tony. You’re still the love of my fuckin’ life. I’m sorry, that’s probably not what you wanna hear from me right now, but it’s the truth. I love you so fuckin’ much, and you probably wanna shiv me in the back for what I did, and I don’t fuckin’ blame you. I just… I don’t want you to hurt anymore.”  

Tony deflates, the righteous anger falling out of him in a heavy swoop. “It’s not your fault,” he says, quietly.

Bucky snorts. “It really is,” he says, bitterly.

“It wasn’t you, not really,” Tony says, weakly.

Bucky scoffs. “Don’t give me that _you’re a victim_ bullshit, not you, not now, not when you don’t believe a fuckin’ word of it.”

“You’re wrong,” Tony retorts, grimly.

He’s never not believed it.

“Am I?” Bucky challenges, folding his arms over his chest. “You’re tellin’ me that you’re okay with sittin’ here with me and watchin’ TV and knowin’ that I’m the one that took your ma away from ya? Don’t lie to me, Tony. Don’t you do that.”

Tony grits his teeth, wringing his hands together. “Look, this isn’t easy for me.”

Bucky’s voice gentles. “That’s why I’m tryin’ to make things easier for you. Let me go, Tony. Let me go; let _me_ make this better for _you_.” 

“I don’t want you to go,” Tony blurts out and then wishes he’d said nothing.

Bucky stares at him like he’s a vision, and there’s no air left in his lungs.

“Oh, honey,” Bucky murmurs.

“Don’t go, Bucky.”

Fuck it, he’s begging.

He knows if Bucky walks out that door, it won’t ever get better; it won’t ever get easier; sure, there’s white noise roaring in his ears and his heart is pounding against his lungs, but he knows if Bucky leaves now out of some misguided desire to protect him and they don’t fix this, it’ll be something he doesn’t _want_ to have to move on from; he doesn’t _want_ to move on from Bucky, and he doesn’t want those fascist cunts who decided his parents had to die to win and ruin Bucky and Tony in the process.

He won’t let that happen.

“Please, don’t go,” Tony says, roughly. “Just… sit with me. Let’s talk.”

Bucky looks at him like he’s the sun and the moon and the stars to him. “Are you sure?” he asks, relenting.

Tony nods. He reaches out and does a brave thing, threading their fingers together. Something inside him melts at the simple touch, and it feels right.

“Let’s just talk, please.”

Bucky nods after a moment, a little stunted, and they both sit down on the couch, facing each other.

“I know it wasn’t you,” Tony begins, heavily. “I want… no, I need you to know that. I need you to know that even when I first heard about… what happened… I never once thought it was your fault.”

Bucky looks like he doesn’t believe him. “Tony,” he says, uncertainly.

Tony shakes his head. “No, I was angry and I was hurt and I was resentful, but I never felt any of those things towards you. I was angry at Rogers and Romanoff and HYDRA and the fucking universe for putting me in this position, putting _us_ in this situation. I was hurt that Rogers and Romanoff kept this from me, from _us_ , and I was hurt and resentful that this was even happening, that after _everything_ , we still had to go through this as well. I never felt any of those things for _you_.”

Bucky looks down at his upturned palms, splayed on his thighs. “I wouldn’t blame you even if you did,” he says, quietly.

Tony shakes his head. “No, no, you _should_ blame me,” he insists. “Bucky, none of this was your fault. And I’m sorry I left you here to deal with everything that happened on your own.”

Bucky grimaces. “You had to take care of yourself first. I’m glad you were taking care of yourself.”

“I should’ve checked in. I just couldn’t…” he doesn’t quite know how to finish his sentence.

“… couldn’t look at me?” Bucky guesses, bitterly. “Yeah, I know the feelin’.”

“Yes,” Tony confesses and looks away. “It’s fucked-up and not cool at all, but I couldn’t look at you yet. Not because I blamed you, but because all I could remember is that I _knew_ it was your hands that killed them, and I couldn’t handle that, not quickly at least. I just needed some time.”

“And now?” Bucky asks, curiously. “Can you look at me now?”

“Bucky,” Tony sighs. “If I couldn’t look at you, I wouldn’t be in this room with you right now. I wouldn’t be talking to you. I’d still be in my workshop, pretending you don’t even exist.” He bites his lip. “I’m sorry.”

Bucky laughs, dark and haunted. “Why the fuck are you apologisin’ to me?” he demands.

Tony gives him a soft, sad look. “‘Cause you were dealing with it too, and I forgot that.”

Bucky’s lips quirk up at the corners. “They weren’t my parents, doll,” he reminds him.

“No, they weren’t,” Tony concedes. “But they’re more people you have to add to your list, and I would never want that for you, Bucky. I’m just sorry HYDRA got one last dig at you through me.”

“ _I’m_ sorry that you have another tragedy in your life, and I’m the cause,” Bucky murmurs, his brow furrowing.

“It wasn’t _you_.”

“But I still did it. And you know I did it. That’s enough damage, don’t you think?” Bucky says, wearily, and then shakes his head. “Fuck, I never wanted this for us. I just wanted us to be happy. I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy.”

“You got that right,” Tony mutters.

It’s the story of his life: come within tangible distance of a happy ending and have the whole thing go up in flames by some stupid, terrible quirk of fate – that describes him to a T.

“So,” Tony says, slowly. “Where do we go from here?” he asks, a little afraid of what answer Bucky will give him.

He doesn’t know why he’s afraid – he doesn’t even know what he wants.

Bucky softens. “Where do you want to go from here, honey?” he asks, gently.

“Don’t answer my question with another question,” Tony complains, half-heartedly. Finally, he sighs. “I don’t fucking know.”

“Neither do I,” Bucky murmurs, running a hand through his long, unbound hair.

Tony swallows hard. “Friends?” he offers.

Bucky blinks, confused. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe we should, uh, start off as friends, see how we go,” Tony says, a little more confidently.

It’s no less a blow to irrevocably lose what they had, but they were never going to get it back, not with this hanging over their heads like a noose.

Bucky hides his flinch as best as he can, keeping up the charade of willingness, but Tony sees it and it hurts him just as much as he bets it hurts Bucky.

“Maybe that’s the only way,” Bucky agrees, his voice dipping low.

Tony wishes he hadn’t agreed so quickly.

He swallows hard, pretends like his bones don’t hurt, and keeps his face mild, mustering a tentative smile just for him.

“Friends, then?”

* * *

They’re friends now, which means they do friend things. They go to lunch together and they watch TV together and when Bucky’s arm needs maintenance, Tony fixes it in the room he didn’t even want Bucky to keep, because Bucky doesn’t want to come down to the workshop just yet, not when things are so raw between them.

It’s miserable as fuck, for both of them, but it’s the best that they’ve got.

They cheat, sometimes, because it’s easy.

It’s always been easy for them.

They’ll be doing some inane and so pedestrian that later on Tony won’t even understand how they got from A to B, but then Bucky will get this obscene, relentless look in his blue-grey eyes, which Tony will quickly match, and the next thing Tony knows, he’s being bent over the pool table, while the man fucks him stupid.  

Bucky grunts, softly, with each thrust, keeping him pinned down with his arse tilted up. Tony grips the frame of the pool table, holding on for dear life, while he grinds himself down onto Bucky’s cock in a rhythmless frenzy. He makes a sharp, high-pitched noise when Bucky’s cock drags relentlessly over his prostate.

“You’re so good for me, doll,” Bucky growls in his ear, stroking a hand up his warm side. “I’ve missed this. God, I’ve missed you.” His voice breaks off halfway, voice thick, wet with feeling.

Tony whines, all sweet and needy, leaning back to grip his hip. “I’ve missed you too.” His voice catches. “I’ve missed you too.”

_I don’t know how I went this long without you inside me._

Bucky’s whole body shudders and goes taut, drawing out of him with a deliberate flex of muscle, before he turns Tony over, so that he can sit up and wrap his legs around Bucky’s waist and meet his eyes, which widen and then flutter shut, when Bucky rams back inside.

“Shit,” Tony hisses, grasping Bucky’s shoulders.

“You’re tellin’ me,” Bucky pants, his voice strained, as he thrusts up.

He pounds into him like he’s on a mission, leaving Tony to dig into the pool table frame, praying that the table won’t collapse under him. The blood thumps in his ears and he writhes, arching up into the thrust, as the orgasm shakes right through him. Bucky gives one final, brutal thrust, and then chases his own climax with aimless, shallow thrusts, coming inside him with a rough, aborted groan.

Tony makes a little gasping noise when Bucky drags out of him, letting himself lie back down onto the table curling in on himself, even if his legs shake.

When he looks up, Bucky is staring down at the picture he makes with a dark, haunted look in his eyes, his cock slick with lube and come and hanging between his legs.

“I shouldn’t have…” Bucky shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

Tony sits up, weakly, biting back the urge to flinch at the way Bucky looks at him, like what they did was disgusting, even if it’s the closest Tony’s come to comfort since this clusterfuck began.

He curls in on himself, wrapping his arms around himself.

“It doesn’t have to be a… a thing or anything,” he says, lamely, grimacing. “It can just be… a friends thing. Friends with benefits, that’s a thing, right?”

Bucky reaches out and runs his thumb over Tony’s flushed cheekbone. “Honey, makin’ love to you could never _just_ be anything.”

He leans in, pressing his mouth against Tony’s hairline, soft but fierce, curling a hand around the nape of his neck. He stills, letting them linger in this moment, and Tony’s chest hurts, his heart pounding viscerally against his lungs.

He never wants to leave this moment. He never wants this to end.

But Bucky pulls away and leaves him there.

Tony runs a hand over his face and pretends like it ( _everything_ ) doesn’t hurt.

* * *

Tony’s walking through a dimly-lit corridor, lined with cold, white bricks that make him feel empty, and he resists the urge to fidget, to wring his fingers together, because the oddness of the moment lingers in the air, like a shuddering sort of stillness that doesn’t settle well with him.

But he pads along until he comes to the double doors in front him, unwelcoming in their metal aesthetic.

He takes a deep breath, the air curling into ice, and pushes the doors open with a shrill creak that makes Tony wince.

It’s a large room, like an operating theatre in an hospital, with the same sort of overhanging lights and stretchers lined in neat rows from the door to the end of the room.

Tony’s beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

He folds his arms over his chest, drawing in on himself, but nonetheless continues through the room. He isn’t tempted in the least to remove the sheets that cover what he presumes are the corpses lying on the stretchers – he can’t think of anyone who would be _that_ curious and stupid simultaneously.

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to react, with fear, with confusion, with anger – it all seems so distant to him. He just wants to be gone; he wants to wake up with the safe knowledge that this a dream, a fucked-up dream, but a dream nonetheless.

There’s one more stretcher smack-dab in the middle of the passageway of the theatre, conveniently placed like some sick, twisted version of an altar in a church, like he had to go on some great pilgrimage to reach this corpse. Tony stops in front of it, stares down at the sheet, and feels his heart flutter a little in panic.

He doesn’t pull back the sheet.

He already knows who’s under it, and it won’t do anything for him, not anymore, to pull back this sheet.

Howard’s had too much of him already, including his grief – _no more._

He turns around to leave the theatre, to leave Howard where he belongs, in his grave (Howard is the one to ruin everything, as usual; he’s the reason his mother is dead, because he was so fucking stupid and reckless to keep a gold mine in the trunk of his shitty car when he knew people were trying to kill him, and Tony will never forgive him, will never love him the same way every again – Howard doesn’t deserve it).

But Howard isn’t done with him, or that fucked-up sliver of his subconscious that is suspiciously shaped like Howard (daddy issues, thy name is bitch) isn’t done with him, because a hand, cold and thin as a toothpick, with skin oddly stretched over bone and tendon like wax, reaches out from under the sheet to hold his wrist in a grip that no dead man should be able to have.

The sheet falls off Howard’s corpse.

“Not yet, boy,” he rasps, his eyes like two dark orbs in a pale, sunken, bruised face (like he’s newly dead and not a corpse for more than twenty years).

Tony smells the sickly-sweet butterscotch-type odour that lingers in the air and thinks he might vomit there.

“You don’t get to run away that easily from me,” Howard growls, emptily.

Tony grits his teeth. “Yeah, yeah, I do. Fucking let me go, old man,” he snaps.

Howard eyes him as he’s always eyed him, like he’s looking right through to his bones and flesh and sins and found him wanting.

Tony wants to roll his eyes. _Fucking Howard._

“You disappoint me, boy,” Howard exhales, his voice dragging like a chain on gravel.

 _I always have_ , Tony reasons, and for once, it doesn’t hurt, the overwhelming realisation that his father died disappointed in him.

“After everything I did for you, after everything your poor mother did for you, you go and do something like this. You go and fuck the monster who killed us.”

Tony feels the acid rush of bitter, seething hatred. “He’s not a monster, old man,” he snaps.

Howard raises a barely-there eyebrow. “My corpse would beg to differ,” he says, dryly.

Tony’s still trying to come to terms with the fact that he’s having a fully-fledged conversation with his dead father’s dead body, but his rage wins out.

“It’s not Bucky’s fault what happened,” Tony argues. “He’s just as much a victim as you and mum were, more so. _You_ were the idiot who decided to drive around with a fucking super soldier serum in the trunk of your car. _You_ got mum killed. _You_ got yourself killed.” He shakes his head, leaving imprints of his fingernails in his thighs, through the denim. “What is it so great about fucking Captain America that you’d put your damn wife at risk?” he demands.

Howard stares at him. “You wouldn’t understand,” he says, coldly, and that’s that, because there’s no way of changing Howard’s mind about him, not if he’s already found him lacking in some way.

Tony has the sudden urge to do something incredibly fucked-up like spit in his dead father’s face, if only it’d make him feel better. He takes a step back, instead. He wants this conversation over. He wants Howard gone, buried in the ground like Tony knows he is in reality, and even when his eyes shut and open, Howard is still fucking there.

Tony takes another step back.

Howard gets that greedy, hunted glint in his eyes that Tony’s seen a thousand times over – it looks somehow the same and unwaveringly different on his sunken face.

“You don’t get to leave that easily,” he hisses and tugs on the hold he has on Tony’s wrist, bruised nails digging into his skin.

“Tony? Tony! Tony, wake up!”

Tony wakes up with a jarring shout, jack-knifing up into Bucky’s careful hold.

“Tony,” Bucky murmurs, his voice gentling, his grip on Tony’s shoulder firm but not overbearing. “Tony, doll, it was just a nightmare.”

“I know,” Tony wheezes and lets his head fall into his knees.

Bucky clucks his tongue and his hand moves from Tony’s shoulder to drag through his messy, sweat-damp hair, gently, in a rhythm that makes goosebumps pebble across his skin.

“It was a bad one, huh?” Bucky guesses.

“So bad,” Tony moans, wanting with everything inside him to curl up against Bucky.

He can’t do that though, not any more.

They’re just friends, after all.

He feels the bed dip under Bucky’s weight.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice muffled by his knees.

“JARVIS told me you were havin’ a bad dream, and that your heart rate was right up there. He was real worried about ya.”

 _So was I_ is what Bucky doesn’t say, but Tony finishes it in his head, knowing that Bucky would’ve said it had they not been in _this_ situation.

“You want to talk about it?” Bucky asks, carefully, as if he’s unsure how his words will be taken.

Tony shakes his head, not because he doesn’t want to talk about it with _Bucky_ , but because he doesn’t know how to formulate what just happened into actual, proper words.

“Maybe I should go,” Bucky says, tentatively, over Tony’s head. “I don’t wanna make ya uncomfortable or anythin’.”

_No!_

“Stay,” Tony blurts out, grabbing blindly for Bucky’ wrist before he can move off the bed, his eyes big and round as the moon.

Bucky reels back, his expression uncertain, but not releasing himself from Tony’s grip. “Tony…” he trails off.

One of Tony’s hands fiddles with the bedsheets. “I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to.”

Friends don’t stay, after all.

Tony ignores how much it hurts, knowing that Bucky is so unsure, when he’s had and loved the Bucky who would’ve jumped at the chance to hold him close while they slept, especially after he had a nightmare.

“But I just thought… I usually sleep so well if you’re around, but it’s totally cool if it makes you uncomfortable,” Tony says, quickly. “I don’t… I don’t want to fuck up what we have going here either.”

Bucky gentles his expression. “You’re not gonna fuck up anythin’,” he reassures, threading their fingers together. “I’ll stay. Don’t worry.”

“Really?” Tony asks and hopes it doesn’t come out as miserably pathetic and expectant that it sounds to him.

“Yeah, I’ll stay, honey. Go back to sleep. I won’t let the nightmares bother ya,” Bucky says, softly, brushing strands of Tony’s messy hair away from his face.

Tony bites his lip and nods, tucking the blanket around himself securely, before burrowing into the pillow.

“Thank you,” he says, quietly. “I know you don’t have to do things like this for anymore, so, thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure, doll. Like I said, if I can keep you from bein’ hurt, I’ll do my damn best.” 

Tony nods and goes willingly when Bucky urges him down onto the bed, wrapping him in the quilt. Bucky smooths his hand over Tony’s hair, like he’s an injured baby fawn.

“Just close your eyes,” he soothes. “Everythin’ll be good in the mornin’, okay?”

Tony nods into the pillow and lets his eyes flutter shut, letting the black sweep him up.

He doesn’t know how long it is before he’s rustling awake, to the sound of a thump, a muffled curse and unforgivable muttering. The room is blanketed in darkness, when he opens his eyes, but when he squints, he can see a familiar outlined shape at the foot of the bed. He sits up, half-heartedly, ignoring the stretch in his arms, in his thighs.

“Are you-” Tony rubs his eyes. “Are you sleeping on the floor?”

Bucky shuffles to a seated position, peeking his head over the frame of the bed.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Why the fuck are you sleeping on the floor?” Tony asks, bluntly.

“I, uh, I wasn’t sure if you’d be okay with me sleepin’ in the bed. Doesn’t seem like somethin’ I can do now.” Bucky shrugs. “I didn’t wanna make things worse for ya. So, the bed seemed like a safer option. But I, uh, misjudged the distance, banged my head on the damn bed when I was tryin’ to get comfortable.”

Tony sighs and lets his head slump back against the pillow. “You are such a disaster, Barnes.”

“Yeah, I am,” Bucky says, quietly.

“Get up here.” Tony pulls the quilt back, wearily.

“I really don’t mind sleepin’ down here-” Bucky says, earnestly.

“Bucky,” Tony says, his voice stern.

Bucky stills. “Yeah?”

“Get up here.”

His voice brooks no argument, and Bucky quickly climbs onto the bed, settling on the mattress beside Tony, his body rigid like he was terrified of crossing some invisible boundary that Tony had drawn up.

“Bucky,” Tony exhales. “If you’re gonna act like a mannequin, we’re gonna have problems.”

Something loosens in Bucky and he lets himself wriggle out a bit.

“I just…” Bucky makes a noise of discontent. “I just don’t want ya to feel like I’m pushin’ somethin’ I’m not.”

“Believe me, I know you’re not pushing anything,” Tony says, dryly.

Bucky’s fist clenches and unclenches, his metal hand resting on his stomach. “Only if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, then.”

Tony turns onto his side and closes his eyes, praying that sleep will come quickly once more.

It doesn’t, though.

He’s distracted by the attractive possibility that Bucky’s warmth beside him presents. He lets himself be greedy, edging in close enough that he doesn’t seem desperate, but that he can still rest his palm on the mattress between their bodies and brush up against Bucky’s.

Bucky stares down at him, his thumb dragging back and forth across the slope of Tony’s hand, his eyes wide and blue-grey and hungry.

Tony swallows hard. “I don’t think I can be friends with you,” he blurts out.

Bucky flinches and turns his head. “Yeah, I get it,” he says, grimly.

“No, no, you don’t,” Tony insists, propping himself on his elbow. “I mean… I don’t think I can be friends with you, not after I know what it’s like to be _with_ you.”

“Tony,” Bucky sighs, running a hand through his hair. “We decided-”

“I know what we decided,” Tony interjects. “And I think it’s bullshit. I love you, and you love me, right?”

Bucky grits his teeth. “With everythin’ in me,” he confesses.

“Then, what else is there to say?” Tony asks, helplessly.

“If you’re tryin’ to pretend what happened didn’t happen-”

Tony shakes his head. “It _did_ happen, and I know that. And yeah, it’s not easy to come to terms with everything, but I’m working on it. I just…” he closes his eyes, letting himself set in his resolve. “You are not an acceptable loss, even in this, do you understand me?”

All the lines of Bucky’s face soften, and he reaches for Tony, pulling him in close, his metal hand settling on the strip of olive skin bared to him by Tony’s muscle tank.

“I don’t wanna lose you either,” Bucky murmurs, pressing his mouth against his hairline.

Tony tangles their legs together. “So, why can’t we just be together?”

“Tony-”

Tony lifts his head. “You’re trying to protect me, and I love you for it, I do, but this is my choice. I love you, and I want to be with you, and I want to get through this _with you_ , not without.” He musters a shaky smile. “Unless, you don’t want to do any of that, which is fine, of course-” he says, quickly.

“You know, for a genius, you sure are stupid sometimes,” Bucky says, casually.

Tony shrugs, unwilling to put much stock into the hope that curls in his ribs. “It was bound to happen at some point, right?”

Bucky’s gaze is needle-sharp. “You’ll tell me, if you change your mind, or if somethin’ doesn’t feel right to ya,” he says, sternly.

Tony bites his lip and nods, his belly swooping.

Bucky sighs, the furrow smoothing out, and runs his hand through Tony’s hair. “You always have to get what ya want, don’t ya, doll?” he says, amused.

Tony shrugs, burying his face in Bucky’s neck. “I was a rich kid. It’s kind of par for the course.”

_And I usually don’t get what I want. You’re the first thing I’ve wanted that I want to keep. Don’t let me lose you too._

Bucky’s hands are everywhere: under his shirt, on the inside of his thighs and over his shoulders, and Tony thinks this is what home feels like, what home _should_ feel like, and no wonder people kill and burn for this feeling – he thinks he would too.

“We’re going to be okay, aren’t we?” Tony asks, pressing his mouth against his collarbone.

“Yeah, honey,” Bucky says, quietly. “We’re gonna be okay.”  


End file.
